5 Things About Bees

5 Things About Bees

Sting

Bees will usually only sting in self-defence or when protecting nests. Honey bees, for example, can release an 'alarm' pheromone signal to the rest of the hive to protect it until the threat disappears. Strong wing vibration intensities (buzzing noises) act like distress warnings to intruders that you could get stung.

This process gets exacerbated if a bee is fatally injured - such as after stinging - the aggression can get amplified further because embedded stingers will keep releasing pheromones afterwards, attracting others (apparently, it smells like bananas and doesn't dissipate very quickly).

Swarms with high stinging frequencies are definitely the most dangerous due to venom accumulation. Sometimes a wild one's pheromone could cause attacks in domesticated honey bees (which is especially bad since keepers will be close to their territory).

Unlike bumble bees, honey bees can only sting once if the recipient has thick enough skin, e.g. mammals; otherwise, they could sting more, e.g. other insects. It's because their stingers are barbed and not smooth (aside from the queen) for whatever evolutionary reason, where the barbs rip out the abdomen, muscles, nerves, parts of the digestive tract, and several internal organs, dying a few minutes after.

Bee stings should involve slightly acidic venom, so alkaline baking soda helps with pH neutralisation to ease histamine rash irritation + inflammation.

Sociality/Communication

Honey bees live in colonies of tens of thousands; however, bumble bees only have about a few hundred, regardless both function for the benefit of the collective hive over individualism. Each hive actually has its own unique scent for family member identification.

Overall, they're highly developed social systems, especially for insects, and are the most advanced in the insect kingdom - considering all the 'job' roles and communicatory methods...

Queen = for reproduction by egg-laying

Workers (majority) = sterile females that build, maintain, plus defend the nest; raise young, care for the queen and drones; forage, feed others (trophallaxis) and construct honeycombs e.t.c.

Drones - males with no stinger, only function to mate with the queen

For physical interaction, bees have antennae for touch identification, picking up sound vibrations - like from predators - and smelling (they may taste with their tongues too). Their important uses are why they need to clean them so much.

Although, the most striking communication forms are probably the honey bee 'dances'. They're particular patterns of flight that convey information about flower, food and water source locations - or even an area for relocation. The angle of the series of moves dictates the entity's position relative to the sun.

Other bees joining in could be considered as an 'agreement' or 'acceptance' of the info - while the dancing intensity reflects the strength of it (which might infer some kind of anticipatory state that accounts for the objective's importance/quality). Dances are presumably more convincing with odours carried on the bee, which act as credible 'evidence' for the bee's description of the intended goal - it also helps locate it easier by comparing (or if the bee's original odour is likewise present there).

Anyway, different patterns will naturally correlate to various meanings - the most well-known is the 'waggle dance', which takes the shape of figure eight. Said dance is generally for things far from the hive, such as over 150 metres - during which the abdomen shakes side to side, where longer durations allude to longer distance.

Other types could include the 'round dance', consisting of more circular movements that relate to closer distances (perhaps within 50 metres); the 'sickle dance', which would make the shape of a screwed-up croissant and entails a distance of between 50-150 metres.

Lastly, olfactory pheromones can enforce certain behaviours in mass response; for example, courtship or territorial warnings can diffuse throughout the hive (because there are so many bees, something far-reaching is needed). Usually, it's the queen over the rest of the swarm. Keepers can get queen pheromones on them; bees of said queen's hive become more relaxed, as it's like an 'overseer' of safety - so they're less likely to get stung, yet more likely to be attacked by any rival queens.

Honey

Both honey and bumble bees produce honey, except honeybees produce excess stores. Honey bees have wax glands to create the honeycomb cells (the hindlegs measure the cell size). They are dense structures for storage of food, eggs, larvae and pupae.

After collecting nectar from flowers, it gets stored in the cells, and the enzyme 'invertase' is added. The nectar sucrose sugar becomes catabolised into simpler sugars of glucose and fructose; the enzyme also reduces moisture content.

The substance then gets preserved as the honey we know (which never expires). Honey can actually help stimulate mitosis in white blood cells for improved immune functionality.

Pollination

Bees are some of the most effective pollinators due to their organisational efficiency, not to mention pollen being one of their staple food sources alongside nectar (bees see ultraviolet light, and flowers have UV patches/'nectar guides' that attract them over to land and show where to retrieve the nectar).

Flowers and bees have a mutually beneficial relationship, as the bee gets food, and the flower gets to reproduce. Bees often stick with the same/similar plant species if desired, giving them a chance to thrive. Therefore naturally, flowers have competed and adapted to appeal more, likely via bright colouration, scent, petal texture, shape, plus their abundance of pollen + nectar.

Roughly 80% of plants rely on bees for reproduction - pollen gets transferred from the 'stamen' mini stems (structure containing male genetic material) to the 'stigma' female structure - located at the top of the 'pistil' (the lanky stem part in the flower's centre).

Bumble bees are the better pollinators; being more solitary, they disperse to cover more areas and hold more grains with their hindleg pouches plus big hairy surface areas (pollen's negative charge attracts to the bee's positive charge, generated by friction via air molecules). Some plants' pollen will only release by a bumble bee's 'buzz pollination' - pertaining to specific wing muscle + thorax vibrations.

It's vital for biodiversity, crop quality, harvesting yield, as well as other economic and health benefits. Animal-based pollination encompasses ~30% of global food production; crops bees specifically pollinate contributes to ~33% of what's available for humans. The diversity of fruits, nuts and seeds; for instance, equates to pollination activities' worth of at least 100x more than the value of honey and beeswax.

More Bumble vs Honey Differences (most popular types)

Bumble: rounder, fluffier, more colourful, better at coping with low temperature, typically nest underground, hibernate, better for pollination, plus more independent

Honey: lankier, more uniform colour, more translucent wings, live longer, shorter tongues (restricted to open flower shapes for food), huddle for warmth during winter, better for honey, plus more cooperative

-substantially higher numbers in honey than in bumble bees means they can afford to venture further + thoroughly for food, covering each other concerning predators; it's efficient yet can be dangerous during times of low food availability, concerning intensified competition; there's also higher predator detection rates and increased susceptibility to disease transmission in the hive-